


no obligations, rules or authority

by EagleOfTheNinth



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, shameless crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 01:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EagleOfTheNinth/pseuds/EagleOfTheNinth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Caity: I still wanna cry at the memory of Nora going "Moms are tough." Because she may have been tough, but...<br/>eagleoftheninth: Sometimes tough just isn't enough...<br/>Caity: But I can promise, if she'd not fallen when she did... She would have followed Hope up into Anima and god help anyone who messed with l'Cie Nora!</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	no obligations, rules or authority

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleCaity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleCaity/gifts).



Nora remembers how Fang and Vanille used to talk about Gran Pulse, on that terrible adventure. They recounted tales of their lives before being branded, with the sorrow of someone who’ll never see their home again. They made it sound such a warm, wonderful place, nothing like the hell it was in Cocoon’s stories. A place where everyone was family.

Well, that’s true in a way, Nora supposes. And this isn’t their time or place, either. This is Paddra of the south, eighteen hundred years before Cocoon fell, nine hundred years before Cocoon was even _created_. Fang and Vanille haven’t even been born yet(and that’s a very strange thought. Almost as strange as looking at the sky and seeing neither a floating shell-world nor land beyond the blue). Maybe the Oerba they knew is/was/will be nothing like this city. And Paddra in 1840 B.F. isn’t quite hell either, maybe...

But it’s _certainly_ not heaven.

Everyone wants to know your business here, that’s the problem. Everyone wants to know who you are and what clan you’re from and what you’re doing and even what you’re thinking. There’s no privacy. Nora’d expected something like that, remembering Vanille in Oerba saying _they’re all our houses_. Remembering the beds big enough to sleep five or six adults at once, the stewpots that looked made to cook for an army. Remembering the nosiness and lack of personal space that Vanille and Fang showed sometimes, like children who honestly didn’t know they were being rude. She wasn’t entirely unprepared. But Paddra...there’s something about it that raises the hairs on her neck a little, makes her want to slip into Sentinel’s stance. The curiosity in this place about every aspect of a person’s life doesn’t seem nearly so innocent as Fang and Vanille’s.

She thought at first that she was just suffering from a mix of xenophobia and paranoia. After all, it’s fairly nervewracking living here, keeping up the pretence of Gyza Esh Nora, not revealing that she’s from a place that doesn’t exist yet. If it weren’t for her strange friend Yeul’s help, she’d never have managed it. Gyza is on the other side of the continent, and Esh is a clan not well represented here, so there are few people who can catch her out in mistakes-Yeul picked her alias carefully-but still... Nora is not used to maintaining a deception like this. And she’s worried what would happen if she was found out.

Because that’s the thing. It’s not just that the timeline might be messed up by the addition of a woman from the future(as though _that’s_ nothing)-it’s what would happen to Nora herself. Paddra doesn’t tolerate...strangeness. Otherness. Oh, there are many clans here, with many representatives...but there are even more clan-names that get a bearer foolish enough to admit to them exiled or imprisoned or put to death immediately. There’s a list, Yeul told her, a list of the clans who are deemed friendly to Paddra, and anyone not on that list within the city’s walls...their life is forfeit. And worse yet, there’s the matter of her magic. It’s a terrible, ridiculous inversion of the old situation on Cocoon. L’Cie, with brands, are allowed. Honoured, even. But anyone _without_ a brand who uses magic(and apparently there _are_ others, though this is centuries before the invention of the manadrive, and Nora herself’s a bit of a special case)...well.

If it wasn’t for Yeul, Yeul who met her almost as soon as she’d landed here, reeling from the shock of being yanked backwards through time without so much as a by-your-leave, Yeul who’d covered for her and warned her, given her fake identification, explained what she should be wary of...if it wasn’t for Yeul, Nora would already be dead. It’s crazy, really, because Yeul is the ruler here, or nearly-the Seeress of Paddra, the Reborn. But as she told Nora, she’s just a girl. A figurehead more than anything. Once she-well, another her, many generations ago-really was in charge here, but right now all the power’s in the hands of the Viziers and their secret police. They can’t get rid of the seeress, but they can limit her influence. Yeul has inside knowledge and power enough to protect Nora, to protect one person, but that’s hard enough and she can’t really do much _else_.

Yeul thinks Nora can help her, though. Nora’s really not sure what to think about that. She’s lost most of the raw power she had as a l’Cie, and she’s woefully under-informed about this place’s politics. Yeul may be a seer(Nora’s had proof enough of _that_ )but she’s fairly certain this isn’t something Yeul’s Seen happen. It’s wishful thinking. Yeul Saw Nora as one of the seven and one l’Cie whose story was a miracle, one of the seven that took down Orphan, and with the naïveté of any thirteen-year-old decided Nora was some kind of conquering hero come to reclaim her city for her. Not a former housewife who’s getting on in years, dumped unceremoniously in a strange, strange land, so far from her husband and her son and everyone and everything she knew. Moms are tough, but Nora knows; she’s not a hero. Just a survivor. She can’t fix everything, the way Yeul seems to think she can. All she can do is hunker down and search for a way back home.

So here she is, searching. Yeul gave her the clues; she needs an artefact, and a gate, and that’s how she comes to be here; in a...well, they call it an orphanage. Nora, privately, would call it a few other things, none of which are repeatable. Vanille always said there _weren’t_ any orphanages on Gran Pulse; everyone was family, after all. So a child was never without someone to raise it, even if its direct relatives were dead or indisposed. And that’s true in Paddra...mostly. For most children who are unlucky enough to lose their parents.

But then there are the children that nobody wants. The different ones. The sickly ones. The ones who aren’t quite right in the head. The ones who make trouble and won’t fit in. Those children are sent away. Disabled or mentally ill ones are hidden in institutions and forgotten about, never let out to see the sky again. And the ones who are healthy enough, but difficult in personality, or plain unwanted...they come here.

This is the Orphanage of the Oblates. It’s a training camp. Children are beaten into submission here, beaten down physically and mentally. Rebellion squashed out of them once and for all. They have to bend, or else break. And they are promised, if they are good, if they prove themselves worthy...then when they come of age they’ll be given a chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of Paddra. As heroes.

As l’Cie.

This entire facility exists to prepare children for delivery to the fal’Cie and Nora has never been so angry in her life.

She understands completely why Yeul is so furious with the way things are here. And she really wishes she could help her. Wishes she could burn this place to the ground, whisk all these poor kids away to somewhere safe. But she _can’t_. Maybe if she was still l’Cie, if she still had her Eidolon-she places her hand on her solar plexus and remembers the burning itch of the brand there, remembers being able to reach _in_ and pull out the blue-green jewel of the Eidolith and call up Leviathan to rage at her side... But Leviathan’s gone, and even if he wasn’t, there would still be no place she could take these kids, no place they could go. There is no safe place for them in Paddra. She is powerless, and hates it.

Yeul thinks the artefact is here, somewhere. A seer’s hunch is worth listening to, even when it is only a hunch and not a complete vision. She got Nora in as a cleaner. Nobody pays any attention to a woman with a mop and bucket. A cleaner can go over the whole building(and it is a large building; so many children...)looking for the thing that does not fit, and arouse no suspicion. It’s as good as invisibility...as long as she does not draw attention to herself. Nora keeps her head bowed, so that nobody will see how her lips are tight with rage, how her eyes want to fill with tears.

She has been here a week, and she has found nothing. Perhaps, she thinks, Yeul lied to her; perhaps the artefact is not here, perhaps Yeul thought to goad her into action by showing her first-hand how these children suffer. But no. Yeul is odd-as might be expected of a seer-but Nora is a mother, and she has experience of the deceptions of teenagers, and Yeul does not read that way to her. Hope could never pull one over on Nora; she doubts Yeul could.

She continues walking, down the stone corridors. Sienna-golden stone, carved intricately, but somehow it is still as bare and institutional as any building erected by the Sanctum. She has not had time to check the east wing properly yet; perhaps the artefact is there...

A child is sobbing.

Nora stops in her tracks.

There’s a doorway to her left, leading into one of the boys’ dormitories-the door is open, they’re not even trying to hide this. There is a child and he is sobbing, crying out in pain, little yelps and whines like a wounded animal, because a man in the uniform of Staff is beating him. Hard. They all carry rods for this purpose, specifically. There are no other people in the room, empty in the middle of the day. He can’t be more than seven and there is blood on his back, there is blood and whenever he cries out the man just hits him harder-

In a split second that seems to stretch on for eternity, like the split second it always took to call Leviathan, Nora decides. To hell with the artefact and the gate, to hell with her cover, to hell with what’s sensible and realistic and plausible. To hell with it all. _She will not allow this_.

She stands in the doorway, head raised, and calls out in a clear, ringing voice, “ _Shame on you for hurting a child!_ ” And she plants her feet, squares her shoulders, and lets the light of Steelguard, of Sentinel’s magic, shimmer across her skin.

She hears the man gasp and curse at her- _Witch!_ or _Bitch!_ or something-but it’s muted, far away. There’s a roaring like the sea in her ears. He tries to hit her, but she’s Sentinel now and she hardly feels the blow-she doesn’t have her gun, so she counterattacks with the mop she’s still holding, wields it like a quarterstaff and drives the handle of it into his throat. Then switch stances, to Ravager, and water-fire-ice-lightning-air! Water-fire-ice-lightning-air, flicked at him with a quick motion of her fingers, and then he’s down and crumpled at her feet.

The child is gasping, curling in on himself, as the sea-roaring recedes. “I won’t hurt you,” Nora tells him, making her voice as gentle and soft as she can. “It’s okay.”

“You killed him,” whispers the child. His eyes are large and dark and very scared; his hair, clipped short, is a splash of rich purple. Paddrean children, loved and wanted, _real_ children, have long hair that their parents braid with strings of red thread and blue-eye beads and little copper medallions, charms to ward off evil. The children in this orphanage all have their hair shorn down almost to the skull.

“He was hurting you,” Nora replies, keeping her voice gentle. She’s not sorry she killed the man. She’s killed before, and this time she feels she was well justified. She will not mourn the death of this man, as she mourned the Cocoon soldiers she’d ripped apart with her magic for the sake of her life and her son’s. They were honest men some of them, no doubt, honest men and women trying to protect themselves and their people as best they knew. _This_ man was beating a child till he bled, and she has no sympathy for him. She’s not sorry. But she is sorry for scaring the little boy.

“I was bad,” whispers the boy, and Nora’s heart constricts in her chest. She reaches out towards him, not quite close enough to touch, and shifts again, into the stance of a Medic. Cures ripple from her fingertips, and the child’s wounds heal. He lets out a tiny surprised noise-not a gasp, but a _chirp_ , like a young chocobo’s-and then huddles up further, pressing his hands to his mouth. Nora keeps her eyes on him as she drags the corpse, shoves it under a bed in a corner where it maybe won’t be so immediately noticeable. She knows she has only a short time before someone else comes and discovers what she’s done.

“You’re _not_ bad,” she says quietly, fierce and tender and earnest.

The child eyes her back, fear writ in every line of him; then all of a sudden breaks eye contact and moves quick as a startled rabbit. Nora thinks at first that he’s going to bolt out of the room, but no; he just pounces on something on the floor that she hadn’t noticed, scoops it up and hugs it to his chest-

-and then she looks at that thing, really looks at it, and her jaw feels like it will drop. _Look for something that doesn’t fit_ , Yeul had said to her. _Look for a crystal._ A rough, lumpy, luminescent-yellow and black crystal. “Where did you get that?” she asks him, and her voice is _still_ gentle but now it wobbles a little.

The boy scrunches up further, curling himself round his prize as if to hide it. “Found it,” he tells her, voice so small and hesitant. “Didn’t steal it, _promise_ , found it in the bathroom... Kept it ‘cause it was pretty, sorry, _promise_ I didn’t steal it...” Nora understands in a flash. _A child who has nothing of his own finds a jewel, and hides it away, a treasure. Of course I couldn’t find the artefact-someone else already had it! The child’s treasure is discovered, and he is punished for it..._

A plan of sorts is forming itself in her mind, crystallising into shards of icy certainty. _I have the artefact. Yeul told me where the gate is. I have my map of the city. It would be too difficult to retrieve my gun, but I still have magic. I can get there, if I’m fast, if I’m lucky. Go through the gate, find another gate and artefact...keep moving, and keep track of my path, till I find my friends, my family, wherever and whenever they are now. Then tell them about this, and lead them back here. Maybe I can’t conquer this city on my own, but all of us together, armed and prepared-we’ve done impossible things before, and they will be as angry as I am. And I have all the time I need to search, this is_ time travel _!_

 _And I’ll take this child with me. I can’t leave him behind here. ‘Only those with the power of chaos can go through the gates,’ Yeul said-but what about the things they carry? I brought my clothes, my bag, my gun with me to this time. Perhaps if I’m holding on to him, or carrying him, when I activate the artefact, he’ll be pulled along with me. I have to try, at least-there’s no future for him here. Only pain. I’ll come back for the others, but this child I can save_ now _._

It’s insanely, wildly dangerous, of course. Running for her life with a frightened child in tow...But after all, Nora knows something about _that_. She straightens her clothes quickly, gives the little boy her warmest, kindest smile. “What’s your name?” she asks.

The child hiccups, hesitates, then mumbles “Paddra Yun Caius.”

Yun clan. Nora’s mouth quirks upwards a little at one corner. What was it Lightning used to say? _There are no accidents._ Certainly this nugget of luck and coincidence is enough to make a person believe a little in the existence of the strange benevolent Powers that Light worshipped. “That’s a lovely name, Caius. I’m Nora. And I’m going to get you out of here for good.  Bring your treasure; we’ll need it.”

The gate is half-way across the city. Time to get moving.


End file.
